Acts 5:12-20
Liturgy of St. Thomas Sunday
John 20:19-31

"I Will Not Believe!"

But he said to them, "Unless I see in His hands the print
of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails,
and place my hand in His side, I will not believe."

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The natural state of the human person is belief in God, even, love of God. Should it surprise us that this is the natural state of a child's heart and soul? Were we not created by a loving God, Which is our Father in Heaven? Yes, and He made us lovingly in His Image. He endowed us with a divine spark, which is His Divinity. And He surrounds with His wise and loving guidance and angels each day of our lives. Our lives begin in Him, and they are completed in Him. This is the natural course of life.

I do not say that every moment of every life is holy. Sadly, many of us have strayed. Many of us have become estranged from Him. Like egotistical children wrapped up only in themselves, many of us have rebelled from the most stable and most loving home imaginable. He has granted us the freedom that is enjoyed only by Himself and the angels. We are, therefore, free to set our mind and will against God blaming Him for our shortcomings and the collective shortcomings of humankind.

Those of you who follow the Hermitage meditations have heard these sentiments many times. They ring true. They ring true to us and to many others. Dr. Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at Oxford (Centre for Anthropology and Mind) has made the same point in scientific terms. (The Telegraph, November 24, 2008). His research has shown that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume everything in the world was created with a purpose:

"The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past ten years or so has shown that a lot more seems to be built into the natural development of children's minds than we once thought including a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose ... If we threw a handful on an island and they raised themselves, I think they would believe in God."  ("Today," BBC Radio 4)
He is echoed by the social scientist Dr. E. Margaret Evans at the University of Michigan (Center for Human Growth and Development). She says that
children doubt impersonal processes could create order or purpose. Studies with children show that they expect that someone, not something is behind the natural order. "Children under ten-years-old," she said, "rejected evolutionary accounts of the origin of species even when parents and teachers endorsed Darwin's theory. Running against a powerful tide of desiring approval and acceptance, children cannot be swayed from the their natural predisposition to favor God over human theories of creation."   (The Guardian, November 24, 2008)
That is, yes, we are born with a natural awareness of God's preeminence in the world and in our lives, but this natural inclination of the mind can be pushed aside by an act of will. As St. Thomas the Apostle says,
"I will not believe!"
What brings about the will to reject God? Some people claim that it is science. They say we have a new religion: scientism. And in scientism there is no room for God. But this is not true. Such a claim reflects a lazy mind — one that is given to making bold statements before thinking the subject through. In general terms, we could say that the domain of science is how things work, not why they work or exist in an absolute sense. Science does not claim to address absolute questions. Far from it! Scientists understand that all scientific knowledge is temporary and provisional. Conversely, the Holy Scriptures constitute a revelation of God and God's ways and nature.

In like measure, religion does not claim authority concerning the inner workings of the created order. Persuaded by Galileo's findings, the Roman Catholic Cardinal Caesar Baronius said, so it turns out that "the Bible is not about how the heavens go, but how to go Heaven." Science contemplates the material world — that is, the world made of matter. But God is Spirit (Jn 4:24), a category that the sciences do not address.

What brings about this rejection of God, then? In his Pensees, Blaise Pascal famously argues that in rejecting God there is only loss. In one of his ponderings, he imagines a wager. A man is asked to wager all that he has, even his life, concerning the existence of God. If he bets that God does not exist, and he is right, what does he receive? Nothing ... and nothingness. If he bets that God does exist, and he is right, what does he receive? Eternal bliss and everlasting life in God's Heaven. If God does exist, and he has rejected God in his wager, he receives everlasting torment and eternal separation from God. Who, Pascal asks, would accept a wager like this where nothing is risked and everything is to be gained? Or everything is risked in order to gain nothing? Is this not a fool's errand?

So we repeat. What is it that brings a man to set his mind and will against belief in God? During the nineteenth century Thomas Huxley, known as "Darwin's bulldog" for his dogged defense of his famous associate, was asked by a newspaper reporter, Why is it that Charles Darwin's scientific paper outlining his "Origin of Species" printed in a dry, esoteric journal, the proceedings of the Linnean Society, sold out? This has never happened before! Why now?! Huxley replied, "Why did it sell out? Because the word went round that Darwin had gotten rid of God." The implications were instantly clear to everyone in the room. If God could be gotten rid of, then moral restrictions could safely be cast away. To say it from a different direction, when the human will becomes absorbed, even dominated, by sin, the in-born belief in God must compete with a secret desire to be free of moral consequences. The perverted will wishes to betray marriage, betray children and family, betray God's well-ordered and wholesome world. This is the "every day" scale of the struggle: freedom to live an immoral life versus Godly life, self-discipline.

What happens in the upper room, where the Risen Christ visits, is of a completely different scale. We have heard it said, How is it that men who ran, abandoning the Lord to execution, suddenly should become bold, sure-footed Apostles, the ones we saw in the Acts of the Apostles today? They were honored by the people, we read. This morning's Gospel meditates on that miraculous change in spirit and character. The door, we read, is shut, meaning locked. The disciples are fearful. Perhaps they will be persecuted by Temple police or arrested by Roman Legions! They hide. Any knock at the door is bound to be followed by "Who goes there?!" No doubt, some have bitterly regretted following Jesus of Nazareth. They grieve, but perhaps they are also relieved that this strange episode in their lives finally has ended.

Then .... He appears! It is not over! Indeed, it has taken a strange, new turn .... in a ghostly way, even a bloody way. For He appears covered with wounds — His hands, His feet, His side. Of course they rejoice! But this is not simply a rolled away stone and burst of divine light. No. After all, these are refugees fearing arrest who now encounter their condemned and executed leader, who remains wounded. There is anxiety, which helps us to understand the atmospherics in the room when Thomas arrives, for Thomas reflects the mind of the group before the Lord had appeared. He says,

"Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and place my finger
in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe."
Notice the exhaustive precision. It is anatomical and thorough. These are the words of a man who perhaps feels that he had been "taken in" because he was incautious, because he did not look closely enough. But it will not happen a second time!

Here is the mind of fear. The fearful will is informed by a certain egoism, an inclination to protect itself like a convalescent patient who has taken to his bed and wants to be left alone. The Disciples, who had run, now place themselves first, not wanting to be dragged in to the "Jesus ordeal" again, much less to carry forward His public ministry. Surely, hiding in a locked room they no longer have the look of Apostles, sent out into the world with God's mantle about them. But it is upon this fearfulness, upon this doubt and withdrawal, that Jesus chooses to found the Church:

"Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you." And when
He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.
If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any,
they are retained."
The Church is gathered. The Holy Spirit, which is the Church's living nucleus is emplanted within the Apostles (who are now sent once again), and St. John chooses to emphasize two sacraments: Baptism (new life in the Holy Spirit) and Reconciliation (renewed baptism). Jesus is very clear that the Apostles are to do this, not Him. Here is the Church in a nutshell: the path to following, even becoming, Jesus, through the dark night of fear and suffering on to the Resurrection light and to new life. We read that "the Disciples were glad when they saw the Lord."

Whether it is a twenty-first century man or woman encountering the living God or it is the first-century Disciple of Jesus, with the appearance of God, the selfish and self-absorbed will is shattered. God shatters our plans. That is His trademark. He shatters our pride, breaks down our fears and defenses, and erodes the perverted will. Why do I say perverted? Because every act of will that separates us from God is perversion, as the natural state of the believing and seeking child demonstrates.

The tendency of adults divorced from God, whether men or women, is to pile up explanations for a world that has no place for God and justifications for living ungodly life. But the One Who shattered Hell did so by merely being there. The One Who enters the locked upper room changed everything by appearing. And the One Who suddenly appears in our own lives turns everything upside down Everything we thought important, everything we had bet our lives on, everything .... It is swept away. Ask any who has truly encountered God. God appears. And the world we thought we wanted drifts away.

God does not persuade. He does not engage us in debate. He simply is — to an adult a shock and surprise and tumultuous earth movement in life, but to a child, the appearance of God is quiet and beautiful and always to be expected. For it is the fulfillment of all the world is and means and promises.

Belief in God is the natural state of man and woman. It is encoded within us at birth. It is the world and an act of perverted will that undermines the beautiful soul emplanted within us at conception. But divorce from God is a fearful act of withdrawal and a diminishing of our full stature. It is upon this foundation of fear and doubt that Jesus chooses to establish His Church. The Church gathers us as living souls. We participate in the Holy Spirit there receiving baptism and renewed baptism (reconciliation). This is His plan. This is His will. And from here He can once more speak into our childlike hearts, to which belongs the Kingdom of Heaven.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.